THE WOMBFLASH FOREST
He awoke to his third day on Tormance. His limbs ached. He lay on his side, looking stupidly at his surroundings. The forest was like night, but that period of the night when the grey dawn is about to break and objects begin to be guessed at, rather than seen. Two or three amazing shadowy shapes, as broad as houses, loomed up out of the twilight. He did not realise that they were trees, until he turned over on his back and followed their course upward. Far overhead, so high up that he dared not calculate the height, he saw their tops glittering in the sunlight, against a tiny patch of blue sky.
Clouds of mist, rolling over the floor of the forest, kept interrupting his view. In their silent passage they were like phantoms flitting among the trees. The leaves underneath him were sodden, and heavy drops of moisture splashed onto his head from time to time.
He continued lying there, trying to reconstruct the events of the preceding day. His brain was lethargic and confused. Something terrible had happened, but what it was he could not for a long time recollect. Then suddenly there came before his eyes that ghastly closing scene at dusk on the Sant plateau - Spadevil's crushed and bloody features and Tydomin's dying sighs.. .. He shuddered convulsively, and felt sick.
The peculiar moral outlook that had dictated these brutal murders had departed from him during the night, and now he recognised what he had done! During the whole of the previous day he seemed to have been labouring under a series of heavy enchantments. First Oceaxe had enslaved him, then Tydomin, then Spadevil, and lastly Catice. They had forced him to murder and violate; he had guessed nothing, but had imagined that he was travelling as a free and enlightened stranger.
What was this nightmare journey for - and would it continue, in the same way? ...
The silence of the forest was so intense that he heard no sound except the pumping of blood through his arteries.
Putting his hand to his face, he found that his remaining probe had disappeared and that he was in possession of three eyes. The third eye was on his forehead, where the old sorb had been. He could not guess its use. He still had his third arm, but it was nerveless.
Now he puzzled his head for a long time, trying unsuccessfully to recall that name which had been the last word spoken by Catice.
He got up, with the intention of resuming his journey. He had no toilet to make, and no meal to prepare. The forest was tremendous.
The nearest tree appeared to him to have a circumference of at least a hundred feet. Other dim boles looked equally large. But what gave the scene its aspect of immensity was the vast spaces separating tree from tree. It was like some gigantic, supernatural hall in a life after death. The lowest branches were fifty yards or more from the ground. There was no underbrush; the soil was carpeted only by the dead, wet leaves. He looked all around him, to find his direction, but the cliffs of Sant, which he had descended, were invisible -every way was like every other way, he had no idea which quarter to attack. He grew frightened, and muttered to himself. Craning his neck back, he stared upward and tried to discover the points of the compass from the direction of the sunlight, but it was impossible.
While he was standing there, anxious and hesitating, he heard the drum taps. The rhythmical beats proceeded from some distance off.
The unseen drummer seemed to be marching through the forest, away from him.
"Surtur!" he said, under his breath. The next moment he marvelled at himself for uttering the name. That mysterious being had not been in his thoughts, nor was there any ostensible connection between him and the drumming.
He began to reflect - but in the meantime the sounds were travelling away. Automatically he started walking in the same direction. The drum beats had this peculiarity - though odd and mystical, there was nothing awe-inspiring in them, but on the contrary they reminded him of some place and some life with which he was perfectly familiar.
Once again they caused all his other sense impressions to appear false.
The sounds were intermittent. They would go on for a minute, or for five minutes, and then cease for perhaps a quarter of an hour.
Maskull followed them as well as he could. He walked hard among the huge, indistinct trees, in the attempt to come up with the origin of the noise, but the same distance always seemed to separate them. The forest from now onward descended. The gradient was mostly gentle -about one foot in ten - but in some places it was much steeper, and in other parts again it was practically level ground for quite long stretches. There were great swampy marshes, through which Maskull was obliged to splash. It was a matter of indifference to him how wet he became - if only he could catch sight of that individual with the drum. Mile after mile was covered, and still he was no nearer to doing so.
